Program

By visiting sites associated the World Wars & Holocaust, students will gain an experiential appreciation and understanding of the two most consequential wars in modern human history, along with the impact of nationalism, Nazism, dictatorship, and the Holocaust on modern history. Students will also learn about those who opposed World War I, World War II, Hitler / Nazism, and the Holocaust. Along with this historical perspective, students also will gain insight about the ways that these events influenced a variety of American writers and literary works.To learn more about this program abroad, please read students’ blog posts from the March 2018 program abroad.

Itinerary

France

Paris WWII/Literary walking tour

Normandy D-Day beaches

Paris Seine river cruise

Belgium

Belgium WWI Western Front tour

Brussels walking tour

Menin Gate Memorial

Germany

Munich Nazi walking tour

Dachau concentration camp

White Rose anti-Nazi Resistance Museum

Academics

This trip is a component of Spring 2020 courses – HISTORY 374: Europe Since 1914, ENGLISH 420: American Writers & the World Wars, and GS150: General Education Abroad I for Literature Credit. EN420 will allow English majors to complete their upper-level American Literature requirement. GS150 will enable students to fulfill their General Education literature requirement, as well as their experiential learning graduation requirement Any student not registering for these courses may receive approval from Dr. Scott Bennett or Dr. Cappucci to join the program abroad.

Faculty Leaders

Dr. Scott Bennett – Dr. Scott H. Bennett, professor of history, is a historian of the United States and contemporary global history. He has a special interest in war, peace, and society–and has published books on American opponents to both world wars. For ten years, he taught in international schools in El Salvador, Italy, and Denmark, and, more recently, taught at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, for a semester. He has led students on dozens of trips to sites of historical and cultural significance in Europe, Vietnam, and the mid-Atlantic region. He believes that travel is a transformative experience.

Dr. Paul Cappucci – Dr. Paul Cappucci, professor of English, teaches courses in 19th and 20th century American literature. In these courses, he encourages students to explore the ways that historical events inform writers and shape the works they create. Along with teaching courses in modern poetry, fiction, and drama, he also has taught a course on American war literature. Besides his scholarly work on the modernist poet William Carlos Williams, he also has published journal articles that examine the representation of war in the work of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville. He looks forward to sharing in the transformative impact this trip will have for all its participants.